Catalogue of the papers of RONALD GEORGE WREYFORD NORRISH, FRS (1897 - 1978)

SECTION A BIOGRAPHICAL AND PERSONAL CSAC 86/4/82/A.1 - CSAC 86/4/82/A.9

SECTION B DIARIES AND NOTEBOOKS CSAC 86/4/82/B.1 - CSAC 86/4/82/B.7

SECTION C NOTES, DRAFTS, LECTURES, CORRESPONDENCE CSAC 86/4/82/C.1 - CSAC 86/4/82/C 12

This small manuscript collection represents all that survives of Norrish's distinguished career. The material was received by courtesy of Sir Frederick Dainton and Professor B.A. Thrush, joint authors of the Royal Society Memoir of Norrish (Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, 27, 1981), to whom we are also grateful for information about some of the items (see especially CSAC 86/4/82/C.2).

The collection consists of correspondence received by Dainton and Thrush while they were working on the Memoir, a few school and undergraduate diaries and notebooks, and some rather miscellaneous notes, drafts and correspondence. These include a complete draft for a very early (1922) unpublished paper on 'Colour and Atomic Constitution ...' (CSAC 86/4/82/C.1) and some interesting notes on disassociation, c.1930 (CSAC 86/4/82/C.2), which illustrate the basis of much of Norrish's classical photochemical work in the nineteen thirties. The surviving correspondence owes its survival to chance rather than merit and in any case is very sparse, although there are a few interesting letters which reflect on Cambridge chemistry in the early nineteen hundreds (CSAC 86/4/82/C.7).

Norrish's school chemistry set is in the Science Museum, South Kensington, London.

Compiled by: Jeannine Alton

Julia Latham-Jackson

The work of the Contemporary Scientific Archives Centre, and the production of this catalogue, are made possible by the support of the following societies and institutions

The Anatomical Society of Great Britain and Ireland

The Biochemical Society

The British Pharmacological Society

The Charles Babbage Foundation for the History of Information Processing

The Institute of Physics

The Institution of Electrical Engineers

The Nuffield Foundation

The Physiological Society

The Royal Society of London